This invention relates generally to high speed computer processing circuitry and particularly to high speed microcomputer circuitry that has low power consumption, provides powerful mathematical processing and which may be programmed with a high level language structure at the assembly code level. Still more particularly, this invention relates to an application specific integrated circuit that may be included in a computer system.
The previous method of achieving high speed operation in a processor is by microprogramming very primitive instruction fields. In such processors the execution of interrupts and branching instructions always takes more than one clock cycle. The software design effort and difficulty level increases if the instruction set is made up of primitive commands. In the order of programming ease, the high-level language is the preferred choice, followed by assembly language, the reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instructions, and the microprogram language.
Prior art processors do not perform divide and square root operations in hardware. The prior art processors accomplish division calculations with software, which is time consuming. Conventional microprocessor access look up tables or software codes for square root calculations, which is also time-consuming.